On a related note, I think the behaviour that the game language is determined (also) by the help files is unexpected.
What do you think about the following modification? (for another PR/commit)

index a5fa3ac1889..09da6e84d33 100644
--- a/engines/tetraedge/game/application.cpp
+++ b/engines/tetraedge/game/application.cpp
@@ -176,17 +176,16 @@ void Application::create() {

        if (g_engine->gameType() != TetraedgeEngine::kAmerzone) {
                const Common::Path helpMenuPath("menus/help/help_");
-               Common::Path helpMenuFilePath;
-               i = 0;
-               while (i < ARRAYSIZE(allLangs)) {
-                       helpMenuFilePath = helpMenuPath.append(core->language() + ".xml");
-                       if (Common::File::exists(helpMenuFilePath))
-                               break;
-                       core->language(allLangs[i]);
-                       i++;
-               }
-               if (i == ARRAYSIZE(allLangs)) {
-                       error("Couldn't find menus/help/help_[lang].xml for any language.");
+               const Common::String &lang = g_engine->getCore()->language();
+               Common::Path helpMenuFilePath = helpMenuPath.append(lang).appendInPlace(".xml");
+               if (!Common::File::exists(helpMenuFilePath)) {
+                       helpMenuFilePath = helpMenuPath.append(".xml");
+                       if (!Common::File::exists(helpMenuFilePath)) {
+                               helpMenuFilePath = helpMenuPath.append("en.xml");
+                               if (!Common::File::exists(helpMenuFilePath)) {
+                                       error("Couldn't find menus/help/help_[lang].xml for selected language.");
+                               }
+                       }
                }

                _helpGui.load(helpMenuFilePath);

(based on the implementation for inventory objects... https://github.com/blooperz/scummvm/blob/18cd31fa010cc0af8d4210add4228c3b010a252f/engines/tetraedge/game/inventory.cpp#L108-L119

On a related note, I think the behaviour that the game language is determined (also) by the help files is unexpected. What do you think about the following modification? (for another PR/commit)

The original idea there was to have the language fall back to one that's available and I basically copied it from the original - but looking again I think the implementation may be wrong, so I'd be happy to take a patch that does it correctly :)

Thank you, the suggested implementation of the help files works (tested), but if the selected language is not available it falls back to english.
this is the way inventory objects behave as well.
do you mean you would like it to fall back to the first available language instead? (70cc1a7) should the implementation for inventory object change as well?

Thank you, the suggested implementation of the help files works (tested), but if the selected language is not available it falls back to english. this is the way inventory objects behave as well. do you mean you would like it to fall back to the first available language instead? (70cc1a7) should the implementation for inventory object change as well?

I was unclear, but I did mean fall back to English so that's fine. That's what the original code does and it's how I made my hack in TeCore::findFile work too.

The file finding code overall is not so clean (my fault!) as it's some combination of my faithful reproduction of how the original worked, and adding changes I needed to do to make it work over multiple versions and platforms in ScummVM.

Will give is PR another look and try out tonight but it looks pretty good now, thanks!

Looks good, thanks!